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  • Instrument Node.js applications with OpenTelemetry

Instrument Node.js applications with OpenTelemetry

This guide shows how to instrument your Nodejs application with OpenTelemetry and export the traces to Dynatrace. To learn more about how Dynatrace works with OpenTelemetry, see Send data to Dynatrace with OpenTelemetry.

Prerequisites

  • Dynatrace version 1.222+
  • Send W3C Trace Context HTTP headers is turned on (default setting). To verify this setting
    1. From the Dynatrace menu, go to Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Deep monitoring > Distributed tracing.
    2. Make sure Send W3C Trace Context HTTP headers is turned on.

Overview

To monitor your Nodejs application with OpenTelemetry you need to

  1. Instrument your application,
  2. Send the data to Dynatrace, and
  3. Restart your application and verify the data in Dynatrace

1. Instrument your application

You can use automatic instrumentation (provided by OpenTelemetry) or instrument manually.

To instrument automatically, install the following packages:

bash
npm install @opentelemetry/api npm install @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node npm install @opentelemetry/core npm install @opentelemetry/sdk-node

To instrument manually, install the packages below and add the code snippet below to any Nodejs method you want to monitor. Set names for the tracer, the span, and add attributes as you see fit.

bash
npm install @opentelemetry/api npm install @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node npm install @opentelemetry/core npm install @opentelemetry/sdk-node
js
const opentelemetry = require('@opentelemetry/api'); const span = opentelemetry.trace.getTracer('my-tracer').startSpan('my-span'); //TODO Add names for tracer and span span.setAttribute("my-key-1", "my-value-1"); //TODO Add attributes //TODO your code goes here span.end();

2. Send data to Dynatrace

To send data to Dynatrace, the following tracing setup and configuration should be run before your application code.
Create a file with a name like opentelemetry.js, which will contain your tracing setup code.

js
/* opentelemetry.js */ const opentelemetry = require("@opentelemetry/sdk-node"); const { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } = require("@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node"); const { AlwaysOnSampler } = require("@opentelemetry/core"); const sdk = new opentelemetry.NodeSDK({ sampler: new AlwaysOnSampler(), instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()] }); sdk.start()

To pass Resource Attributes into your traces, you need to set them as environment variables separately.
In this example, we set the service.name as node-quickstart and the service.version as 1.0.1.

plaintext
export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=service.version=1.0.1,service.name=node-quickstart

The following extra packages are required:

plaintext
npm install @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-proto npm install @opentelemetry/resources npm install @opentelemetry/semantic-conventions npm install properties-reader
js
/* opentelemetry.js */ const fs = require("fs"); const opentelemetry = require("@opentelemetry/sdk-node"); const { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } = require("@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node"); const { Resource } = require('@opentelemetry/resources'); const { SemanticResourceAttributes } = require('@opentelemetry/semantic-conventions'); const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require("@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-proto"); const { AlwaysOnSampler } = require("@opentelemetry/core"); const propertiesReader = require('properties-reader'); const OTLPoptions = { url: "<URL>", //TODO Replace <URL> to your SaaS/Managed-URL as mentioned in the next step headers: { Authorization: "Api-Token <TOKEN>" //TODO Replace <TOKEN> with your API Token as mentioned in the next step }, }; dtmetadata = new Resource({}) for (let name of ['dt_metadata_e617c525669e072eebe3d0f08212e8f2.properties', '/var/lib/dynatrace/enrichment/dt_metadata.properties']) { try { dtmetadata = dtmetadata.merge(new Resource(name.startsWith("/var") ? propertiesReader(name).getAllProperties() : propertiesReader(fs.readFileSync(name).toString()).getAllProperties())) } catch { } } const otlpExporter = new OTLPTraceExporter(OTLPoptions); const sdk = new opentelemetry.NodeSDK({ sampler: new AlwaysOnSampler(), traceExporter: otlpExporter, instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()], resource: new Resource({ [SemanticResourceAttributes.SERVICE_NAME]: 'nodejs-quickstart', //TODO Replace with the name of your application [SemanticResourceAttributes.SERVICE_VERSION]: '1.0.1', //TODO Replace with the version of your application }).merge(dtmetadata), }); sdk.start()

Lastly, you need to define the correct endpoint and token, to make sure your data arrives where it should be.

  • To set the endpoint:
    1. Use your Environment ID to set the endpoint to which your app will send traces as follows:
      • Dynatrace SaaS https://{your-environment-id}.live.dynatrace.com/api/v2/otlp/v1/traces
      • Dynatrace Managed https://{your-domain}/e/{your-environment-id}/api/v2/otlp/v1/traces
    2. Replace <URL> in the code snippet above with your endpoint.
  • To create an authentication token
    1. In the Dynatrace menu, go to Access tokens and select Generate new token.
    2. Provide a Token name.
    3. In the Search scopes box, search for Ingest OpenTelemetry traces and select the checkbox.
    4. Select Generate token.
    5. Select Copy to copy the token to your clipboard.
    6. Save the token in a safe place; you can't display it again.
    7. Replace <TOKEN> in the code snippet above with your token.

Now you can run the application as you normally would, but you can use the --require flag to load the tracing code before the application code.

Linux:

plaintext
$ node --require './opentelemetry.js' app.js

Windows:

plaintext
$ node --require .\opentelemetry.js app.js

Verify that the traces are ingested into Dynatrace

A few minutes after restarting your app, look for your spans:

  • In the Dynatrace menu, go to Distributed traces and select the Ingested traces tab.
  • Your spans will be part of an existing PurePath, if the root of your call is already monitored by OneAgent.

If your application does not receive any traffic, there will be no traces.

(Optional) Configure data capturing to meet privacy requirements

While Dynatrace automatically captures all OpenTelemetry resource and span attributes, only attribute values specified in the allowlist are stored and displayed in the Dynatrace web UI. This prevents accidental storage of personal data, so you can meet your privacy requirements and control the amount of monitoring data that's stored.

To view your custom span attributes, you need to allow them in the Dynatrace web UI first:

  • Span attributes In the Dynatrace menu, go to Settings and select Server-side service monitoring > Span attributes.
  • Resource attributes In the Dynatrace menu, go to Settings and select Server-side service monitoring > Resource attributes.